Tool Mentor:  Capturing a Common Vocabulary Using Rational RequisitePro

Purpose

The purpose of defining a common vocabulary is to decrease ambiguity among team members and to establish a common language for considering the system you are building. A common vocabulary is helpful for all descriptions of the system, including use-case descriptions and other requirements documents.

Related Rational Unified Process information: 

• Activity: Capture a Common Vocabulary 
• Activity: Capture a Common Business Vocabulary

Overview

A Glossary provides a definition for each term commonly used in the description of the system you are building. Each project should have one Glossary document.

Tool Steps

To document the project Glossary using Rational RequisitePro, complete the following procedures:

1. Add the Glossary document type to your project (if necessary)
2. Create a Glossary document
3. Create requirements in the Glossary document

1.  Add the Glossary document type to your project (if necessary) 

You can use the Glossary outline provided in RequisitePro if the Glossary document type is available to your project. If your project was created using any of the three templates included with RequisitePro, the Glossary document type is already available; you can move to procedure 2.

To add the Glossary document type to an open RequisitePro project:

1. In the Explorer, click the project. Then click File > Properties. The Project Properties dialog box appears.
2. Click the Document Types tab and click Add. The Document Type dialog box appears.
3. Type a name, description, and file extension for the document type you want to add. The file extension is applied to all documents associated with the document type. GLS is a commonly used extension for glossary documents.
4. In the Default Requirement Type drop-down list box, select Glossary Requirement Type and go to Step 5. If Glossary Requirement Type is not included in the drop-down list box, click New. The Requirement Type dialog box appears.
   • Type "Glossary Requirement type" in the Name field.
   • Type "TERM" in the Requirement Tag Prefix field.
   • Type or change the information in the other fields (optional step).
   • Click OK to return to the Document Type dialog box.
5. In the Outline Name drop-down list box, select RUP Glossary (for software development) or RUP Business Glossary (for business modeling).
6. Click OK to close the Document Type dialog box.
7. Click OK to close the Project Properties dialog box.

For More Information

Refer to the topic Creating and modifying document types (Index: document types > creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.

2. Create a Glossary document

The Glossary document contains terms and definitions identified during all activities of the project and especially when you are eliciting stakeholder needs. (See Activity: Elicit Stakeholder Requests.)

To create the Glossary document:

• Click File > New > Document. The Document Properties dialog box appears.
• In the Name field, type "Glossary." (This will be the way you refer to the Glossary document in RequisitePro.)
• In the Description field, type a short description.
• In the Package field, either accept the default or click the adjacent Browse button to navigate to the package in which you want to place the Glossary document.
• In the Filename field, type a file name, which RequisitePro will use when saving the Glossary document to disk.
• In the Document Type drop-down list box, select Glossary Document Type (for software development) or Business Glossary Document Type (for business modeling).
• Click OK to close the Document Properties dialog box. RequisitePro opens the newly created Glossary document in Microsoft® Word.
• In the Glossary document, add terms and their definitions. Consider using aliases for commonly used terms under the same definition (for example, Operator – see Machinist).
• Click RequisitePro > Document > Save to save the Glossary document.

For More Information

Refer to the topic Creating requirements documents (Index: documents>creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.

3. Create requirements in the Glossary document

The Glossary does not contain requirements per se; however, you may want to mark some Glossary terms as requirements, so that you can keep track of them when they are redefined, and you can update documents as necessary to reflect that change. Marking such terms as requirements allows you to set traceability links between Glossary terms and product features or systems requirements that you might want to reword after a Glossary term definition has been revised.

To create requirements in the Glossary document:

1. Select (highlight) the text of the Glossary term.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Right-click and select Create Requirement.
   • Click RequisitePro > Requirement > New.
     
   The Requirement Properties dialog box appears.
3. Accept the Glossary Requirement Type (TERM) as the requirement type, and click OK to close the Requirement Properties dialog box.
4. Click RequisitePro > Document > Save.

For More Information

Refer to the topic Creating requirements in a document (Index: requirements>creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.

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